Thread: Time Based DTH Billing

With so many DTH players in the market, each offering its own flavor of channel packages, choosing the right package has become a mind boggling and torturous exercise.

With the aim of simplifying DTH billing models, how about Time Based DTH Billing? This could roughly be fashioned on the lines of per-second billing like for Cellular Services, but for DTH there could be a 10-15 minutes pulse billing.

- All channels are available
- Customers are billed per month for as much as they watch
- Billing for a channel starts after 10-15 minutes of watching (pulse rate)
- Each channel could levy its own pulse rate charge
- Quick surfing or viewing for less than 1-15mins pulse does not add up to the bill
- Bill till-date is displayed on a particular channel along with break-up/details

There could be 2 basic models -
A- Pay As You Watch
Here there is no fixed monthly charge, you are billed for as much as you watch.
B- Base Charge + Pay As You Watch
Here there could be a fixed monthly charge. After you've exhausted your base amount, you can continue to watch and pay extra for additional viewing.

Pls. share your views and also take the poll mentioning what model you would most likely opt for - between A & B above.

Note that I do not belong to any DTH operator, this survey is purely for academic purposes with good consumer intent.

Thank you.

A pure time based DTH (pay per view like) would be great. But you are looking only from the consumer point of view. As a broadcaster, I will be forced to transmit all kinds of channels and content but get paid in a limited fashion. There will be no way I could make ends meet unless my PPV charges are high enough to compensate all kinds of viewing. I would be charging high rates on low usage and lower rates on high usage.

Ultimately, it will probably work out the same.

The best method must be a win-win situation to both the parties.

The best example is the "Select channel" option. Most of the DTH providers do have this option., not pay as you go, but pay for only the channels that you wish to watch.

But, if you make a list of channels you see usually and try the option of pick those channels from the list,. even then you end up paying around 250INR per month, considering 7-20Rs/channel. On the other hand if you go for a platinum subscribtion/max channels you get the channels for Rs 1 or 2.
(per channel)

So, for the DTH companies, they dont loose anything... unless if you see DD, and soaps!